“Nice. Vindictive, but nice!” Richard finished the last of his drink and put his glass down on the table. “I need to turn in soon. Long day tomorrow.”
“Yeah, me too.”
Richard opened his mouth to say something, but stopped.
“What is it?”
“I was just . . . I was wondering if you’re still wanting to have dinner together while we’re here.”
Rebecca looked around and lowered her voice. “You mean our date?”
He nodded. “If you still want to.”
“I do. Tomorrow around 8?”
“Perfect. I’ll get us a table at one of the restaurants.”
SIXTY-SEVEN
Rebecca couldn’t hide her smile as she walked out of the bar, across the lobby, and toward the elevators. I forgot what it was like to spend time with him. She pushed the elevator button for her floor and leaned back against the wall. Even when it was awkward it was still . . . right. Her cell phone buzzed in her pocket.
You look beautiful, by the way. I know what I’m dreaming about tonight.
Rebecca shivered in response. She pressed the button for a blowing kiss emoji, then deleted it. She typed ‘goodnight,’ and deleted that too. Rebecca’s stomach was in knots. I’ve never had to flirt by text message before. This is hard! She looked down at her phone again and started typing.
Sweet dreams. xx
Rebecca smiled as she slipped her iPhone back into her jeans pocket and turned the corner down the hall to her room.
“Where have you been?!”
Sarah stood up off the floor and walked toward her mom. “I called you. I texted you. I walked around the whole hotel looking for you.”
“You didn’t look very hard,” Rebecca responded. “I was in the bar in the lobby.”
“Why didn’t you answer your phone?”
“I bumped into an old friend. I put my phone on silent so we could talk in peace. Why? What’s going on?”
Sarah let out a frustrated breath. “Nothing is wrong. I came to your room to say goodnight, but I couldn’t find you anywhere. Your security detail said you were ‘somewhere in the hotel’, which is ridiculous.”
Rebecca pressed her key against the pad to unlock her door. “We can come and go as we please as long as we don’t leave the property. I think it’s nice to have some alone time. And, as you can see, I’m fine.”
“Was it Richard Arrington?”
“Huh?”
“The friend you saw in the bar,” Sarah pressed. “Was it Richard Arrington?”
“You mean Lord Dublinshire, the Chancellor of the Exchequer? Yes, as a matter of fact, it was.” Rebecca stepped inside her doorway. “It’s nearly midnight, honey. I’m tired. Go to bed.”
****
Sarah Bailey stood in the hallway until she heard the ‘click’ from the deadbolt on her mom’s hotel room door. She’s lying. Mom never puts her phone on silent. Ever. Even when Sarah was in college and would drunk dial her at 2:00am, Rebecca always answered. She’s hiding something.
Sarah first noticed the change in her mom’s behavior after they moved to DC. She smiled more. Said yes more. Took longer runs and held shorter meetings. For the first several months, Sarah thought the change was due to her new job and living in a new city. Plus getting rid of my dad, Sarah thought. But then the flowers started to arrive. And the phone calls. And her mom suddenly being very possessive of her cell phone.
By March of that year, everyone on Rebecca’s senior staff knew that their boss had a secret admirer. Sarah enlisted the help of Rebecca’s other assistant, Jamal, to try to figure out who it was.
“It doesn’t help that she does so much on her personal phone,” the young man said one day over lunch. “All her calls that come through me are work-related. Cabinet secretaries, her deputies, her counterparts in other countries. Like that British dude.”
“What British dude?”
“You know, the British treasury guy. The . . . ” Jamal snapped his fingers trying to remember the correct name. “The Chancellor of the Exchequer.”
Sarah had leaned forward in her seat. “He calls her?”
“Sure. Every once in a while. But so do the ones from Germany and Canada and all over.”
“Maybe so . . . but Mom didn’t go to business school with the people from Germany and Canada.”
Jamal pulled out his cell phone and googled ‘chancellor of the exchequer’. Richard’s Wikipedia profile popped up, along with several pictures. “Is this him?”
Sarah looked at the screen. “I guess so. I’ve never met him.”
Jamal turned his phone to look at Richard’s pictures again. “Damn, that boy’s fine. I mean, if your mom doesn’t want him, I’ll take him. Shit.”
Sarah had laughed and rolled her eyes. “We’ll see him at the G7 in June. If Mom is still acting strange, we should be able to find out more then.”
SIXTY-EIGHT
The next day dawned bright and beautiful in Quebec. It was summer, but they were so far north that the nights still turned cold and a hazy mist rose off the river in the morning. Since he didn’t have any official meetings until ten o’clock, Richard stayed in his hotel suite to get some work done. He was buried neck deep in economic reports when he heard a knock on the door. “Come in.”
Expecting to see one of his advisors, Richard was surprised when a younger version of Rebecca stepped through the door.
“Hello, sir. I mean, umm, your lordship?”
He smiled. “Richard will be fine. You must be Sarah.”
The young woman smiled in return and walked further into the room. “Yes sir, I am. How did you know?”
“You look exactly like your mother.”
“Yeah, true. Umm, do you have a minute? My mom is actually what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Is she okay?” Richard asked.
“Yes sir, she’s fine. I just think maybe she could be even better.” Sarah paused and fidgeted back and forth, picking at her fingernails.
“Please, have a seat. Tell me how I can help.”
Sarah sat down and took a deep breath to settle her nerves. “If I’m overstepping here, please tell me. I’ll leave and pretend like this never happened. But I noticed that you’ve been calling my mom a lot lately. Every time she talks to you, she’s in a good mood the rest of the day.”
“Really?” Richard smiled. I knew it was going well, but not that well.
“She told me you were friends in business school, but I can’t help thinking that there was more to it than that. Or there could be more to it now.”
Richard rubbed his hand through his hair. “Perhaps.”
“So perhaps you could ask her to out to dinner?”
“You’re a little behind the game, young lady. We already have plans for tonight.”
“You do?!”
Richard nodded. “We do.”
Sarah leaned forward in her chair. “What happened? Really? Were you two together? Did you love her? Do you love her?”
Richard let out a deep breath. Might as well tell her the truth. She’s already figured it out anyway.
“Have you ever heard of the LiveAid concerts?”
Sarah shook her head no.
“They were a series of concerts in the ‘80s held in London and Philadelphia to benefit charities in Africa. I attended the one in London in 1985, the summer after our first year of business school. But anyway, the concerts were a big deal, and everybody knew they were going to happen. At the end of our first year, a few months before the actual events, our class decided to hold our own LiveAid gala. It was quite a to-do . . . formal attire, dinner, dancing. The works. Exactly what you would expect from a bunch of Harvard students. We held it at a hotel in downtown Boston.
“After the event – bear in mind, we all had a good bit to drink by this point in the night – we decided to explore the campus of a nearby school. Whatever possessed us to do so, I’ll never know. But there we were, four of us in our very best evening wear,
traipsing around the grounds of a primary school. Trespassing, truth be told.”
“Mom did that?”
“Oh yes,” Richard replied with a nod and a smile. His thoughts returned to that night in April in Boston. He hadn’t wanted to explore the school grounds or run the obstacle course that they came across on the playground. But Rebecca was leading the charge, and at that point he would’ve jumped off a cliff if she told him to.
When Rebecca kicked off her right shoe and then her left, Richard had known she was serious. Ignoring the prying eyes of her male companions, she lifted up the hem of her gown until her hands reached the top of her thigh-high pantyhose. Those soon joined her stiletto heels in a pile on the muddy ground. Rebecca hiked up her dress once more, again to mid-thigh, but that time she gathered the excess material and tied it in a knot below her right hip. Glancing down, she had nodded in approval.
Joe and Brian, the other two students in their group, laughed at their friend’s new fashion statement. “Look out Paris!” Brian had joked. “That style will be all the rage soon.”
Richard, for his part, remained silent.
“What – no wise cracks from you?” Rebecca asked.
“No,” he said with a shake of his head. “I think you look great.”
His memory was a bit hazy, but Richard still swore he felt the air shift between the two of them that night. At the time, he was glad that the other two guys were too drunk to notice.
Rebecca had turned away from him, but not before Richard caught a glimpse of her flushed cheeks in the moonlight.
My God, she’s beautiful.
“Are we gonna do this or what?” asked Joe.
“Yes. Let’s go,” Rebecca replied. Finding a stick on the ground, she drew a line through the mud. “Start here. First one to finish the obstacle course and touch the wall of the building wins. Ready?”
Four of Harvard’s best and brightest stumbled into their starting positions in the half-frozen mud.
Richard had stolen a glance at Rebecca, who was lined up right beside him.
Blue eyes fixed on the target ahead. Her jaw was set and focused, which accentuated her high cheekbones even more. And her arms and legs, toned from their regular runs along the river, rippled in ready anticipation.
Richard was mesmerized.
“On your mark,” said Rebecca. “Get set. Go!”
****
“There’s no way.”
Richard woke from his memories to see Rebecca’s daughter staring at him. “There’s no way my mom ran through an obstacle course in an evening gown and heels.”
“Well, technically, she was barefoot. But she did it.”
“You’re making up all of this.”
“I am not. I promise.” Richard paused. “We were all standing there at the end, and I looked over at Rebecca. She had her hands on her hips, her dress hiked up to her knees, muddy feet, and a smile on her face that – well, let’s just say I didn’t need a torch or the moon that night. My whole world was lit by her smile.”
Richard stared across the room, lost in his own memory. “That’s when I knew,” he said. “That’s when I knew that I would always love your mum. That there could never be anyone else.”
SIXTY-NINE
After Sarah left, Richard went downstairs to the conference rooms. He had a full slate of meetings that day, and he couldn’t afford to be caught daydreaming. There was too much at stake for his job and his country. Rebecca will have to wait, he thought, and locked her away in a compartment in his mind.
Nine hours later, when work for the day was complete, Richard returned to his suite and sat down at his desk. His chief of staff soon followed him into the room.
“Would you like me to order some room service, sir?” Tripp asked. “I noticed that you didn’t eat anything at the cocktail hour.”
Richard shook his head. “No, thank you. I’m meeting a friend for dinner at eight.”
“Nice. Who is it?”
Richard knew there was no point trying to keep the dinner a secret. “Rebecca Lewis. The American Treasury Secretary. We went to business school together,” he added. “It will be nice to catch up.”
Tripp nodded his head without suspicion. “Sounds good. I’ll leave you to it, unless you need anything else from me?”
“Not tonight. Thank you, Tripp.”
As soon as the other man left, Richard started getting ready for his date with Rebecca. I haven’t been this nervous in a long fucking time, he thought as he showered, shaved, and walked to his closet to pick out his clothes. Having worn a suit all day, he wanted to be more casual at dinner. But still look good enough to impress her. He picked out khaki pants, a green oxford shirt, and his trusty navy blue blazer. Richard slipped on his Ferragamo loafers for the final touch and looked in the mirror. “Good,” he told himself. “Now don’t fuck this up.”
****
Three floors above him, Rebecca was doing battle with the butterflies in her stomach. She had also showered to wash off the stress of the day, and now she stood staring at her closet while wrapped in the hotel’s robe.
“What the hell am I doing?” she asked herself. “I haven’t been on a date in thirty years.” She pushed her outfit choices along the hanging rack. “No, no, no.” Rebecca let out a frustrated sigh. “He’s going to look gorgeous because he always looks gorgeous. I’m going to look . . . ughhhh.”
The door to her hotel room opened and Sarah walked inside.
“Here, wear this.”
Rebecca spun around to see her daughter carrying a dress over her arm. “I brought this for me, but you should wear it tonight.”
Sarah held up the clothing for her mom to see. The emerald green midi dress had cap sleeves, a fitted bodice, and a relaxed skirt with a slit that was high but not scandalous. A portion of the back was cut out, giving the dress a modern flare.
“I can’t wear that,” Rebecca said. “I’m a Cabinet secretary.”
“There’s no cleavage, it’s well below your knees, and your shoulders are covered,” Sarah argued. “Besides, Richard will love it.”
Rebecca’s eyes opened wide. “How did you – ”
“I saw him this morning and he told me you were having dinner together.” Sarah stepped forward and took her mom’s hands in her own. “I think it’s great. He’s great. You deserve to be happy.”
SEVENTY
Thirty minutes later, wearing her daughter’s dress and her own white Jimmy Choo pumps, Rebecca arrived at Vices Versa restaurant in the nearby town of La Malbaie. Richard had texted her the address, with both of them agreeing that eating away from the hotel would offer the most privacy and least chance of gossip.
Rebecca got out of her car and smiled. The small bistro was located in a brick building on Rue Saint Étienne, a main thoroughfare in the small French-Canadian town. As she stepped inside the restaurant, Rebecca ran her hand over her hair. She had curled it into soft waves and put on more makeup than usual, which made her blue eyes shine even brighter.
Richard was waiting for her by the hostess stand.
“Wow,” he said, running his eyes over her body. “You look incredible.”
Rebecca blushed. “Thank you. It’s my daughter’s dress,” she said, rubbing the bodice nervously.
“You should get one for yourself. You’re a knockout.”
“Puis-je vous aider?” the hostess asked. Seeing their blank faces, she switched languages. “Can I help you?”
“We have a reservation,” replied Richard. “Arrington party of two.”
“Yes, right this way.”
Richard stepped back and held out his arm, motioning for Rebecca to walk ahead of him. He was trying to be chivalrous and polite, but he also wanted to admire her backside as they walked to their table. The years had been kind to Rebecca’s body, and she was as fit and toned now as she had been over thirty years earlier.
Richard shook his head to clear his thoughts and calm his body. Relax. You’re having dinner in a public pla
ce. It’s not like you can press her up against the wall in front of the entire restaurant.
His body tightened even more at that visual. Get it together, Richard. Stop acting like a bloody teenager.
The waitress led them to a small booth in the back corner. Looking over her shoulder, Rebecca saw her security detail grab a seat at the bar while Richard’s protection officer loitered by the back exit.
“This place is great,” Rebecca said as she sat down at their table.
“It is,” Richard agreed. “But anywhere would be great with you.”
A waiter came over and poured their water glasses. After he left, Rebecca said: “I must confess, I’m a bit nervous. I can’t remember the last time I did this.”
Richard leaned forward and lowered his voice. “The last time you went on a date?”
She nodded.
“It’s just me, Becks,” he replied. “No need to be nervous. I have an idea,” he said. “Why don’t we both look at the menu for a few minutes and decide what we want while our nerves settle down. Then we can order all at once and have the wait staff leave us alone.”
“Perfect.”
SEVENTY-ONE
Fifteen minutes later, Rebecca was sipping a glass of rosé while Richard swirled an Old Fashioned in his hand. They had ordered the seared scallops and shoulder of lamb, with ‘crazy style tomatoes’ to share.
“I don’t know what they are,” Rebecca said, “but the description sounds fabulous.”
“I’ll try anything,” Richard replied. “English food doesn’t get very crazy, so a little tomato variety will be good.”
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